


Five and a Half Kisses

by bookishandbossy



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, F/M, more reposting from the Tumblr, one of my personal favorites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 18:05:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2119587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookishandbossy/pseuds/bookishandbossy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Fitz kissed Simmons, and one time she kissed him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five and a Half Kisses

A Half  
It always started innocently enough. One of them took a step too close, or glanced up at the exact wrong moment, and suddenly they were tilting towards each other. Eyes where they shouldn’t be, aware of the exact number of steps it would take for them to fall over the edge together. They almost always stepped back—he would reach around her to grab a tool from the workbench or she would step back to check on the petri dishes. This is a story about the five times they let themselves fall.  


One  
Her family had insisted on inviting his down for Christmas the minute they’d heard about Fitz. Skipping several grades at once had turned making friends into a daunting task and her mother had nearly squealed in excitement when Jemma first told her about Fitz on the phone. Even after she’d emphasized the fact that they were nothing more than friends. Staring up at her brightly lit house, stuffed with four Scots, two Englishmen, and three very excitable dogs, she couldn’t help shuddering. “They’ve been roasting chestnuts by the fire and making gingerbread houses.” she said. “My mother even told me that we’re going to go caroling. It’s not too late for us to run.”  
“They’ll know if we leave.” he replied, sounding just as glum. “My sisters will come chasing after us down the street and have the setters pin us to the sidewalk. There’s nothing for it but to go in.” He hoisted both of their suitcases over his shoulder and marched up the steps to her house, ready to face the synchronized Christmas cheer.  
“There are sweaters involved, Fitz. Reindeer sweaters.” She protested as she trailed behind him, but as soon as her parents flung the door open, there was no escape. She smiled as brightly as she could and strangely enough, as Fitz’s sisters peppered her with questions and maneuvered her down the hallway while her dad offered Fitz some of his home-picked radishes, she felt her smile becoming real. Then they made her stop in the doorway to the living room—just wait here, Jemma, while we get your mum—and she glanced up to see a spring of mistletoe hanging above her. A moment later her dad, looking sheepish, ushered Fitz beside her as their combined families encircled her.  
“We’re just friends. There isn’t going to be some great epiphany where we—”  
“Methinks the lad doth protest too much. Besides, mistletoe rules are mistletoe rules.” One of Fitz’s sisters folded her arms across her chest. “Kiss her already.” They both glanced up at the offending mistletoe, then at each other, and he silently mouthed sorry to her. Then he was leaning across to kiss her and his mouth was a warm stamp on hers and then he was pulling away again in less than a second.  
And both of them knew that they were in trouble when afterward their first thought was that they wished it had lasted longer.

Two  
“Kelly Stewart asked me out.” Fitz told her, testing the words out on his tongue.  
“What did you tell her?” the sample dish almost slipped out of her hands when she heard him. She was trying to sound casual, but she knew that her voice came out much too sharp.  
“I said yes, and she seemed surprised. Everyone thinks that we’re…” He was trying to sound casual almost as much as she was, and failing just as badly. He wasn’t waiting for her to tell him that they were, to put down the sample dish and finish the kiss that they’d started last Christmas. His heart didn’t sink when she kept her back to him and didn’t reply. It definitely didn’t, he reminded himself.  
“But we’re just friends.” she said eventually. “We’d be rubbish as a couple, arguing all the time. There isn’t even the physical…” Or at least they’d been careful to never feel it. As more and more people had made assumptions about them, they’d touched less and less. No more leaning against him during movies, no more standing close together in the lab and brushing against each other accidentally on purpose, no more stealing his food off his fork. The slightest touch would have them jumping apart like they’d been shocked.  
“We just don’t have any evidence. We’re scientists, so let’s do an experiment.” he blurted out. “Let me kiss you, Jemma. And if there’s nothing, there’s nothing. We’ll do it for science.” He was on the verge of telling her to forget about it when she finally turned to look at him and slowly nodded. She stepped towards him, he stepped towards her, and suddenly they were colliding into each other and he carefully molded his mouth to hers. It was a sigh of a kiss, soft and low and a series of impressions that disappeared before he could memorize them. His hands on her back, pulling her closer, and her hands winding through his hair. Her sigh against his mouth as she pulled away and the warmth that she took with her.  
“It’s not time yet.” she whispered. “Fitz, we can’t.”  
“I know.” he slumped against the lab table. They’d both felt it in that kiss: the feelings that waited for them somewhere in the future and the danger that followed behind them. Here and now, at the Academy, wasn’t the time to fall in love. But he clung on to the hope that sometime might be.

Three  
A group of the Academy students had been taken on a “practical experience course”, concocting chemicals in a sparse lab somewhere in the Caribbean. Really it was a vacation, an excuse for the students to down brightly colored tropical drinks, dance too close to strangers, and flirt with the people they would never have looked at back at the Academy. And Leo Fitz was refusing to embrace the vacation attitude on principle.  
He sat at the (ridiculous) tiki bar, gripping a glass of (inauthentic) Scottish whiskey, and watching Jemma dance. She was wearing a sky-blue sundress and a giant tropical flower in her hair, making his heart twist into strange shapes whenever anyone danced too close to her. So he reminded himself that he wasn’t allowed to be jealous and glared down into the terrible whiskey. They were waiting for that mythical sometime, for a time and place when the all-consuming way he would love her would be a miracle instead of a catastrophe. When any day could be your last in SHIELD, it was too dangerous for one person to be your everything. So they were waiting for a safe time and place, he kept on telling himself, a place with professorships and a house instead of a dorm room and an easily excited Irish setter and someday children with Jemma’s eyes. And that was worth waiting for.  
But when Jemma dragged him onto the dance floor, he couldn’t say no. Her eyes were bright with excitement and he remembered how she always talked about going into the field, seeing more of the world besides the walls of SHIELD complexes. It terrified him when he thought about it too long, and still he was sure that he would follow her wherever she went. So he followed her onto the center of the dance floor and followed her lead when she slid her arms behind his neck. And maybe it was the whiskey finally hitting him or the way that she made the cheap colored lights glow, but when she leaned her forehead against his, he leaned in the extra inch and brushed his lips against hers.

Four  
They knew that they were staying together when the letter from Sci-Ops came addressed to Fitzsimmons. She’d never wondered whether or not they would get in, only whether they would let them stay together, and she pulled out the champagne as soon as she saw the letter. All three bottles of it.  
They’d stumbled their way down to the Boiler Room with everyone else who’d received their letters. Someone had rigged the lights to spell our equations across the walls, people were playing strip chess, music was bouncing off the walls, and she was in a dark corner with Fitz, less drunk than she pretended to be. “Told you we’d get in. In spite of that incident with the monkeys.” she shouted over the music at him, giggling at the memory.  
“I didn’t know that they’d eat the cameras!” he said defensively. Fitz had had the brilliant idea of tracking 0-8-4’s through the jungles of Thailand by getting monkeys to pick up cameras. It had been a spectacular failure in every way.  
“When they’re shaped like grapes, yes!” she laughed even harder. “Remember Professor Vaughn’s face when you told me what happened?”  
“If you keep on mentioning the monkey incident, I’m going to have to take drastic measures.” he tried to keep a straight face to warn her but he ended up collapsing in laughter against her. Somehow they’d gotten a lot closer over the past few minutes, her knee pressed against his, her head leaning on his shoulder, their bodies brushing against each other as they each tried to stand straight, and her best wasn’t good enough to keep her from wanting to touch him. And, in the end, it was as simple as that.  
She tilted her face up towards him, his gaze flickered down to her mouth, and then before she could ask him what drastic measures might be, they were kissing and she had her answer. And the way that he kissed her was better than anything he could have ever said.  
Fitz pressed her up against the wall, his hands gripping her hips possessively, and she tugged her hands through his hair to pull him even closer to her. It worked, much better than she’d even imagined, and a sound came out of her mouth that she didn’t even recognize as she felt his heat against her. If their other kisses had been like a soft mist, barely leaving a visible mark on her, this one was a thunderstorm, electric and sudden. His tongue exploring her mouth, her hands sliding under the edge of his shirt to splay across the flat muscles of his stomach, the way that he lifted her up and let her legs lock around his waist when her knees started to weaken…she felt dizzy with wanting. Somewhere in the back of her head, another Jemma Simmons was probably analyzing everything, picking apart why biting down on his lower lip and making him moan against her mouth gave her such a sense of satisfaction, but the Jemma Simmons she was now couldn’t care less, as long as he let her keep on doing it. He’d moved on to kissing her neck now, tongue flickering over her pulse point and fingers dipping just below the edge of her neckline, and she panted out that they should go upstairs. Somewhere where they could put a door between them and the rest of the world, where she could have all of him without anyone trying to stop her. Then he was suddenly pulling away, eyes hazy with desire, and she almost whimpered with the loss of him.  
There was someone coming towards them, calling out their names, and they sprang apart. She should have stopped gasping for breath and his heart should have settled back into a regular slow rhythm but instead the sheer effort of existing apart seemed to have doubled, as if he had been her lungs and she had been his heart.

Five  
After he’d woken up, after the doctors had come and checked on him, after they’d removed most of the tubes and wires, Jemma curled up against Fitz’s side. He kept an arm slung across her, like he wasn’t going to let her go anywhere, and she wove her fingers through his to keep him there. They were on the verge of drifting off into sleep again when she leaned across to press her mouth to his and when he asked her if she was sure, she nodded so vigorously that he felt it vibrate through his shoulder.  
“I’m not waiting any longer, Fitz.” she whispered. And maybe it wasn’t a professorship, or a house with a garden, or a happily ever after tied up with a bow, but, falling asleep together, the moment that they plunged into was them, and it was together, and it was the beginning of perfect.


End file.
